1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to compositions comprising 1,1,1,2,2,3,4,5,5,6,6,7,7,7-tetradecafluoroheptane (HFC-63-14mcee). These compositions include binary and ternary azeotropic or azeotrope-like compositions. These compositions are useful in cleaning applications, as a defluxing agent, for removing oils or residues from a surface, depositing or removing lubricants on or from a surface, and as refrigerants or heat transfer fluids in refrigeration systems, air-conditioners and heat pumps.
2. Description of Related Art
As electronic circuit boards evolve toward increased circuit and component densities, thorough board cleaning becomes a more critical process step. After soldering, the flux-residues are often removed with an organic solvent. Defluxing solvents should have low toxicity and have high solvency power, so that the flux and flux-residues can be removed without damaging the substrate being cleaned. Further, other types of residue, such as oils and greases, must be effectively removed from these devices for optimal performance in use.
Additionally, fluorolubricants are widely used in the magnetic disk drive industry to decrease the friction between a read-write head and a digital disk to reduce wear and minimize disk failure. Deposition of these fluorolubricants on the disk surface requires a solvent capable of dissolving the fluorolubricant and forming a substantially uniform coating of fluorolubricant when evaporated.
Alternative, non-ozone depleting solvents have become available since the elimination of nearly all previous chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs) as a result of the Montreal Protocol. While boiling point, flammability and solvent power characteristics can often be adjusted by preparing solvent mixtures, these mixtures are often unsatisfactory in the commonly used cleaning equipment because they fractionate to an undesirable degree during use. Such solvent mixtures also fractionate during solvent distillation, which makes it virtually impossible to recover a solvent mixture with the original composition.
Azeotropic solvent mixtures may possess the properties needed for these cleaning (defluxing or degreasing) applications and other cleaning agent needs. Azeotropic mixtures exhibit either a maximum or a minimum boiling point and they do not fractionate on boiling. The constant composition in use assures that the composition will not change during use and that solvency properties will remain constant as well.
The present invention provides azeotropic and azeotrope-like compositions useful in cleaning semiconductor chips and circuit boards and processes for removing oil and grease residues from surfaces.
The present azeotropic or azeotrope-like compositions are also useful as refrigerants or heat transfer fluids in refrigeration, air conditioning and heat pump systems.